
Preventing an Indian-Pakistani war, investigating the LeT, and Indian law and order in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, with Ashley J. Tellis.

The objective of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group which carried out the Mumbai attacks, is global jihad. They are second only to al-Qaeda as a terrorist group of global reach.

Pakistan may be forfeiting its sovereignty if it is incapable of cracking down on militants like those that launched the recent Mumbai attacks. As it appears increasingly unlikely that the Pakistani civilian government will be able to crack down effectively, the international community should intervene to protect Pakistan’s neighbors from the threat posed by Pakistani-based terrorists.

Following the Pakistani terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the international community should respond by declaring that parts of Pakistan have become ungovernable and a menace to international security. This violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty will begin to show the world that states that harbor terrorists cannot take their sovereign rights for granted — these rights need to be earned.

President-elect Barack Obama has assembled a bipartisan, centrist national security team, with an emphasis on pragmatic competence. Already faced with a daunting foreign policy inbox, the incoming administration must formulate a response to the Mumbai terrorist attacks without undermining either the current administration’s credibility or the already-weak Pakistani government.
The Mumbai attacks bear the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group which operated in Kashmir in the 1990s, but has global reach today. It was founded and supported by the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency. If Lashkar-e-Taiba responsible for the attacks, Pakistan will face new scrutiny from the U.S. as an ally in the war on terror.

The Mumbai terrorists attacked previously untargeted groups in India, including wealthy Indians and foreigners, in a likely attempt to discredit India as a safe place to conduct business and articulate a wide range of grievances with the government.

The Mumbai terrorists appear to have targeted wealthy Indians and foreigners in a series of coordinated attacks that have left over 100 dead and hundreds injured.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cautioned that the U.S. cannot maintain a credible nuclear deterrent without testing or modernizing its aging stockpile. Gates urged the next U.S. president to engage Russia in new arsenal reduction talks and pointed to the loss of top talent in U.S. weapons laboratories as a major source of concern.

In this phase of the financial crisis, struggling countries are looking to rising powers for help, rather than turning to the conditional aid traditionally offered by the IMF. This trend highlights the shifting global financial order and indicates that emerging powers will undoubtedly play a larger role as the international community attempts to define a new global financial system.